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The movie "Whiplash" explores the underlying ideologies, norms, values, and beliefs through the story of Andrew Nieman, a young jazz drummer. Andrew faces abuse and demands from his teacher, Terrence Fletcher, as he strives for greatness. The film challenges the bootstrap myth, defines success, and highlights individualism. It also examines the role of teachers in pushing students to reach their potential. The movie's director, Damien Chazelle, originally created a short film that inspired the full-length version. The film's themes and performances, particularly by Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, earned critical acclaim and awards. Hello everyone. My name is Elliot Hammond, and I am a student at Whitworth University And I will be dissecting the movie Whiplash, and we will look at the underlying ideologies, norms, values, and beliefs that are embedded in the film. The main character that the film focuses on is Andrew Nieman, who is played by Miles Teller. Andrew is a young jazz drummer who has aspirations of playing in Terrence Fletcher's band at an elite conservatory. Andrew eventually gets into the band through an invitation and finds that Fletcher is an abusive teacher who demands a lot from his players. At one point in the film, Fletcher kicked out a trombonist from his band for not knowing if he was in tune or not. He also made three drummers rotate until they could play the chart fast enough on Fletcher's time. This lasted for about five hours. Fletcher is also verbally abusive many times throughout the film and has chipped away at all of Andrew's self-assurance. We see through the film that Andrew has a drive to become one of the greats and be remembered for his drumming and that this drive slowly turns into an absolute obsession with a scene of Andrew practicing for hours until he's bleeding from his hands, and it seems as though he is almost losing his sanity as he slowly distances himself from the people around him. Next we'll be looking at who produced this Oscar-winning movie and who the actors are and what that might tell us about the ideologies and messages in the film. The movie was written and directed by Damien Chazelle. He's known for other films such as La La Land and Babylon and Chazelle originally created a short film called Whiplash which won some awards and thereafter was funded and created the full-length movie that I watched. Chazelle originally wrote the script out of his frustration with his high school band teacher and he believes that practicing shouldn't be fun. It should be difficult because you're working on all of your flaws and trying to make perfection. However, he doesn't endorse the methods that were shown in this film. There are three main themes present throughout this movie that I will be looking deeper into. The first we will look at is the bootstrap myth present in this film. The second is how this movie defines success as well as the lengths we should go as teachers to bring that success out of other people. And lastly, we will look at how this movie highlights individualism. As I watched this movie, the very first thing I noticed was the bootstrap myth. It is clear that Andrew isn't very wealthy. His mom left his dad when he was little and has been raised in a single-parent home. More on that later. This starts when it is Andrew's first day with the band and Fletcher asks him if he has any players in the family, which he didn't. So Fletcher tells him that he will just have to listen to the greats and practice hard to become one of the greats. Other times in the film, Fletcher tells Andrew that if he wanted the part that he has to earn it. And so he should probably practice harder to play better. Not to mention all of the practice scenes of Andrew losing his mind, playing the drums like crazy, to the point of bleeding all over the drum kit or punching in one of the toms. The use of camera angles and colors in this film highlight how important Fletcher is and how he is supposed to be the villain. He wears a tight black t-shirt for almost the entire movie, showing off his domineering figure. David Sims from the Atlantic says it best in his article titled, The Uncomfortable Message in Whiplash's Dazzling Finale. He says, Director Chazelle often shoots Andrew as an isolated figure surrounded by negative space, emphasizing his enforced solitude, but Fletcher is far more dynamic. This type of shot is seen many times until the end of the movie, where after his fantastic solo, he is seen with a golden light behind him and Fletcher cracking a smile, showing that he has finally succeeded and has shown himself to be one of the greats. Another big theme that this movie touches on talks about what success means and how far we should go to realize our success and also how far we should go as the teacher to help our pupil realize their potential. Kaja Zablocka, in her article titled, Two Cinematic Portrayals of Teachers, John Keating in Dead Poets Society and Terrence Fletcher in Whiplash. She investigates the teaching style of Fletcher and concludes that the character is more like that of a drill instructor or a coach. The character brings up a vital issue of modern education and it makes us wonder if encouragement as the main teaching tool that is used today might have left some true talents to go to waste because they have been praised too often. And we see Fletcher as this abusive teacher throughout the movie. However, his methods in the end did work strictly because Andrew had consented and participated in this style of teaching. The dialogue in the movie also touches on this topic. There's a scene where Fletcher mentions this in a bar with Andrew, that it is an absolute necessity to push people beyond their beliefs of what is possible or we would deprive the world of the next Louis Armstrong or Charlie Parker, who are both legends in the jazz community, and that there are no two words more dangerous than a good job. This movie also challenges our idea of what we believe success is. There is a particularly pivotal scene where Andrew is having a family dinner with his cousins who play D3 football and Andrew mocks them and says that he would rather die alone and have people talk about him at a dinner table rather than die with friends and have nobody ever remember who he was, liking himself to that of the jazz legend Charlie Parker. Andrew also doesn't need his girlfriend to be part of his success. Andrew moves away from the classic heterosexual marriage, settle down and have kids message that is in a lot of movies, and in turn becomes more individualistic in his vision of happiness and success. He slowly pushes away from everyone else and just becomes more and more independent and less reliant on other people to become successful. And the last thing I will talk about is individualism, which I've already kind of talked about a little bit. The scene that I think highlights this the most would be when Andrew breaks up with his girlfriend in the cafe and he just begins listing all of these reasons why they shouldn't be together, namely that she will hold him back and resent him for liking jazz so much. And Andrew breaks up with her because he doesn't want to be held back and wants to be one of the greats. And also, at no point in this movie does Andrew ever go out and try and seek help to become better through the help of someone else he's never seen, taking a lesson or learning from another drummer. In fact, he's often pitted against other drummers, two other drummers in the conservatory, and he often has to fight for the part to play at competitions. And the entire movie is seen through Andrew as an individual pitted against all of these struggles. And he just kind of goes to them alone. And he alone, again, is successful at the end because he went through all these trials and tribulations by himself. One praise that I have of this movie is that it moves away from the lower class, clueless dad stereotype and trope that is often seen in TV and movies. Andrew's dad is very connected with Andrew and checks on him frequently and makes sure that he's doing all right. They also go to the movies together and bond over that. Andrew's dad comes to his jazz performances and is present with Andrew when he's at his lowest, right after he gets kicked out of the band. This representation is important because it can influence how future fathers see their parenting skills. In an article by Jennifer Turchi and Lorena Bernabo titled Mr. Mom No More, Single Father Representation on Television in Primetime and Drama Comedies, they concluded that as fathers internalize their representation on screen, they internalize those cultural messages about single father's ability to parent and can feel incompetent if they see negative portrayals of their situation. As for why any of this analysis matters, it matters because what movies and media display has messages that are meant to tell us what is important and what norms we ought to reconsider moving forward. In this case, the movie highlights the desire for greatness to be a positive thing, no matter the cost to our relationships or to ourselves even. We're also told that there is a single way to pursue excellence, and it is a grueling and difficult process. It also makes us question what talent might be lost in this new age of encouragement in education as a whole. And Fletcher's style makes us reconsider what talent might be lost if we didn't do anything as the teacher in order to make our pupils and our students flourish. Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. I've watched this movie several times over the past couple years, which is why I picked this movie. And I find the acting in the plot to be very compelling. And I think it's one of the best movies that focuses on classical jazz music. Miles Teller's performance as Andrew was phenomenal. And J.K. Simmons, who played Terrence Fletcher, won an Academy and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. The movie won several other awards, including an Academy Award for Best Film Editing, which was awarded to Tom Cross, which I believed was well-deserved just because of how many really compelling and interesting shots and edits there were throughout the film, which really encapsulated the sounds and nuance in playing jazz music.
